1. Technical Field
The present disclosure generally relates to information handling systems and in particular to prevention of communication loops in an information handling system.
2. Description of the Related Art
As the value and use of information continue to increase, individuals and businesses seek additional ways to process and store information. One option available to users is information handling systems. An information handling system generally processes, compiles, stores, and/or communicates information or data for business, personal, or other purposes, thereby allowing users to take advantage of the value of the information. Because technology and information handling needs and requirements vary between different users or applications, information handling systems may also vary regarding what information is handled, how the information is handled, how much information is processed, stored, or communicated, and how quickly and efficiently the information may be processed, stored, or communicated. The variations in information handling systems allow for information handling systems to be general or configured for a specific user or specific use such as financial transaction processing, airline reservations, enterprise data storage, or global communications.
The information handling system can be a distributed information handling system. The distributed information handling system includes a computer network having several groups of computers, servers, or computing nodes that are in communication with each other over a communications network. The communication network allows the computers and/or computing nodes in the network to exchange data and information. The computing nodes can be in communication with each other via a switch having ports. Unfortunately, the ports are conventional ports and thereby unmanaged ports that do not have spanning tree protocol (STP) or other protocols running to prevent communication loops. Further, the conventional ports are not able to manage forwarding on redundant links. If a user connects multiple ports from an information handling system with an embedded switch or multiple ports from a stacked group of information handling systems with embedded switches, an endless Ethernet forwarding loop can be created that can cause the local area network to fail.
In addition without STP or another protocol to manage redundant links, stacked information handling systems with embedded unmanaged switches will maintain separate active and standby lanes through the stack. There is no way to route around an individual link failure without failing the whole lane below the point of the failure. If the uplink on the active side of a redundant stacked information handling system fails, the node must disable its stacking port to force nodes below it or downstream in the stack to switch over to the other lane causing cascading failures.